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11: Water and Air Pollution

  • Page ID
    34683
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    factory generating smoke

    This chapter takes many of the topics addressed in this book like burning of fossil fuels and the handling of waste, and explores how they pollute Earth's water and/or atmosphere.

    • 11.1: Anthropogenic Effects on Water Quality
      Agriculture is the main human activity that can negatively affect the quality of surface water and groundwater. These effects can include addition of pesticides and fertilizers, and contribution to elevated turbidity levels. Leakage from chemical storage tanks (including fuel tanks at gas stations) is another significant contributor to water pollution.
    • 11.2: Groundwater Quality
      One of the good things about groundwater as a source of water is that it is not as easily contaminated as surface water is. But groundwater can become naturally contaminated because of its very close connection to the materials of its aquifer. Additionally once contaminated by human activities on surface, groundwater is very difficult to clean up.
    • 11.3: Air Pollution
      Ozone is ozone no matter where it is in the atmosphere. Good ozone is good only because it is in the stratosphere where we cannot breathe it. Bad ozone also absorbs solar ultraviolet light, but it is down near Earth's surface where we can breathe it. For UV protection, we are interested in the total number of ozone molecules between us and the Sun. 90% of ozone molecules are in the stratosphere and 10% are in the troposphere - some down near Earth's surface where we can breathe them.


    This page titled 11: Water and Air Pollution is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Steven Earle (BCCampus) .

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